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by Stephen Elliott-Buckley
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Unlike Premiers, Drunk Drivers Might Not Be Able to Enter Canada
What's with the smiling?
In doing some research into the emerging Olympic hangover, I found this piece about tourism in Vancouver. A good warning was about tourists with criminal records not necessarily being able to enter the country.
If that only applied to BC premiers, Gordon Campbell would have been stuck in Hawaii for the last 7 years and 7 weeks.
Be aware that if you don’t have a clean record, you may not be able to enter Canada. Certain criminal offenses, such as driving while intoxicated, are considered inadmissible in Canada, and customs agents can look at your records instantaneously and send you home.
Class War Health Justice Privatization
by Stephen Elliott-Buckley
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Danny Williams, Class War, and the Illusion of Choice
I was going to write something about the Newfoundland and Labrador premier skipping to Florida for minor heart surgery. He said, “This is my heart, it’s my health, it’s my choice.”
I was going to write about how obvious the two-tier [class war] society is emerging in Canada.
I was going to write about how the private system drains medical talent from the public system.
I was going to write about how the rich and the poor deserve the best health care system Canada can provide.
I was going to write about the millions of Canadians who are too poor to choose to go to Florida and stay in a comfortable condo.
But then Brian Topp wrote something spectacular!
Tuesday, February 16, 2010 7:30 AM
Danny Williams and the separatism of the rich
Brian Topp
There is a depressing amount of material out there in the open-mouth-osphere, written by American know-nothing-party activists, crowing about Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams’s decision to seek heart surgery in the United States. Proof, they are basically saying, that the Canadian health-care system cannot deliver basic services. And then the counter-offensive, which amounts to: “that’s not true.”
Advanced heart surgery is indeed usually promptly available in Canada to patients who need it. One of our system’s real strengths is that it jumps on life-threatening heath issues quickly once they are identified, as anyone who has spent any time in a hospital ER watching what happens when a truly seriously injured patient arrives can attest. Everyone has their stories to tell — many of them sad, which is inherent in parables of illness and injury. I can testify, from a number of recent heath issues that have danced in and around my family, that in my experience Canadian health professionals move quickly and with world-class care when they know they are dealing with a serious issue.
“World-class” is what the Danny Williams affair is really all about it. Specifically, the return of the world’s class of rich folks to their ancient practice of building a cozy, comfortable and almost entirely separate world for themselves — completely out of touch with the daily lives of most citizens.
So, for example:
Most people who travel by air wait for their flights in cramped, noisy, uncomfortable cattle pens. The wealthy amuse themselves at their ease in comfortable, attactive private airport lounges — catching up on the Wall Street Journal, watching Fox News, and sipping a nice glass of red wine. The same tableau is then re-enacted on the airplane itself.
Most bank customers talk to their accounts through web pages and ATMs (an excellent way to do so, as it happens). The wealthy have personal attention lavished upon them, as banks and other financial institutions have come to focus on “wealth management” as their principal profit centre.
Tax codes in Canada and throughout the Western world are written by and for the rich. Labour codes are written by and for the rich (notably so in Ontario after the Mike Harris government).
James Cameron spent a great deal of a Hollywood studio’s money to make this point in his film Titanic. Then, as now, the rich are shown into the boats when the good ship hits the iceberg. It is the men and women in steerage, the working families who painfully saved their crinkled pound notes for their tickets to get across the ocean and try to find a new life for themselves in the new world, who found themselves floating in the lethal North Atlantic, a few minutes from death.
Kind of like how governments in the industrialized West can pull together trillions of dollars in a matter of weeks to prop up and bail out speculators and profiteers who played computer games just a little too recklessly with our pensions and savings. While the same governments cannot find tiny fractions of those sums to end child poverty, illiteracy, or homelessness (this can’t be done, a young soldier for the separatism of the rich explained to me during last year’s coalition negotiations, because addressing those issues would be “fixed costs”).
Kind of like how a rich man whose titanic ego (and remarkable energy) led him into the premiership of a Canadian province will not give two seconds’ thought to the implications of buying himself care in an American health system tailor-made for wealthy people like himself. Even though he is himself the lead administrator of a public system built on fundamentally different — and far better — principles.
Rich people live in a separate world. And they spend less and less time thinking about the little people whose labour and more recently taxes, now and far into the future, pay for it.
Canada is a country that is, at its core, a rejection of racial, ethnic and linguistic separatism. Instead our country offers a better alternative — flexible federalism and civic patriotism.
Perhaps Danny Williams has also given us cause to reflect on another core Canadian value. Canadians overwhelmingly also reject the separatism of the rich, at least as an organizing principle for public services. And therefore we reject a model of health care that reserves its best services for people like the Newfoundland Premier, while putting the same quality of service out of the reach of most citizens. Imperfectly, not without need for serious and on-going reform, our country offers an infinitely better alternative — health care when you need it, regardless of your ability to pay. As do all developed countries except the United States.
Premier Williams has shown himself to be entirely out of touch with these values. As a wealthy individual he is free to buy whatever the market will sell him anywhere in the world. As a private individual he is and should be free to make whatever decisions about his health he feels right. I wish him a safe and full recovery, and many good, healthy years with his family. But people like this should not be running governments in Canada. As recent economic events have so clearly shown, the public interest is the last thing on their minds.
Activism British Columbia Canada Class War Community Democracy Justice Neoliberal Economics Olympic Games Poverty Vancouver
by Stephen Elliott-Buckley
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National Housing Strategy Rally in Vancouver: Bill C-304
Halfway through the Olympics on Saturday, February 20, hundreds gathered at the Vancouver Art Gallery to call for a national housing strategy. NDP MP Libby Davies’ private members bill C-304 lives on despite Stephen Harper’s cynical proroguement of parliament. Despite killing all his own pending legislation, the prime minister can’t kill private members bills by proroguing parliament. That gives us room for great action next week!
The rally was upbeat and inspiring, following days of the successful tent village.
Also, the enormous Canadian flag draping over the Hotel Georgia was the scene of some creative blowback: “FU2010″.
Some cutting in the top right corner
A closer look of FU2010
The tone of the day was concerned, passionate, upbeat and truly visionary as speakers and the crowd came together to explore a momentous step just days away when parliament re-opens to embark on a new era of social justice in Canada.
John Richardson, Executive Director of Pivot Legal Society spoke of overcoming fear and responsibly planning for the future:
MP Libby Davies spoke about housing being a human right, despite what I consider to be the gross excesses of the Olympics:
She also spoke about Harper’s lack of understanding of poverty and tendency to embrace budget crises as an excuse for inaction:
And she also spoke about what we need to do with her bill when parliament reopens next week:
In the end, when the 1,000 condos in the Olympic Village that cost $1 billion to build [or $1,000,000/unit on average] come on the market over the next few months, Metro Vancouver will experience a housing adjustment. Such a glut on the market will likely depress prices across the region. This can be good for people looking for affordable housing and for renters, despite the fact that few will be able to afford those 1,000 units. The ripple effect will be useful.
But there may be panic, dread, capital flight, or nothing but a different housing climate. In times of flux, there is great opportunity for change. It is within this context that Bill C-304 can make significant strides in addressing the crises of homelessness and affordable housing.
So pay attention to RedTents.org to see what you need to do to make our federal, provincial and municipal politicians do more than toss lip-service to housing issues.
Activism Afghanistan British Columbia Canada Democracy Justice Media Olympic Games Soft Fascism Vancouver
by Stephen Elliott-Buckley
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CBC’s Annoying Olympics Boosterism
Yesterday, the CBC’s annoying Olympics boosterism was complemented with weak reporting on agents provocateurs and missing an opportunity to nail the IOC on rule of law hypocrisy.
I have only slightly more ability to tolerate the CBC over corporate media when it comes to promoting the Afghan occupation and how amazingly, incredibly awesome the Olympics are.
But yesterday, they ran this story: Protesters target Olympic torch run. It included this weak bit of journalism:
The protesters said Monday their group had been infiltrated by undercover police and said the infiltrators might try to cause trouble so that uniformed police could crack down.
VANOC admitted they had infiltrated a protest group a few months ago. There was no ruse “tried” at Montebello; there was no “alleged” in the agents provocateurs, especially those carrying rocks. Video footage at Montebello captured the “protestors” being confronted by real, peaceful protesters and then “arrested” by the police. After the video went viral on YouTube, the police admitted to planting agents in the crowd.
I hope CBC Olympic boosterism did not directly lead to this story’s watered down facts.
Connected to an easy ride on scandalous police tactics, the CBC missed some flagrant hypocrisy from the IOC.
When the IOC rejected women’s ski jumping from the Olympics, they violated our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. BC courts, however, rightly recognized they have no jurisdiction over the IOC, which is a wholly unaccountable international organization which answers to no government and will gleefully violate women’s rights in Canada because of whatever policy they hold on which events to include in their games.
Yesterday’s CBC piece, however, neglected to mention that evidence of the IOC’s flagrant disregard for the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Instead, they merely wrote this:
“We have to accept protests and there will be some and fine, let’s leave it. We are used to that,” said Gerhard Heiberg, a member of the IOC’s executive board, at a Vancouver news conference Monday.
“For us, it’s not an issue. We accept protest, we accept people protesting,” said IOC president Jacques Rogge.
“This is free, democratic freedom of expression,” Rogge said.
“What we want is no violence and we want the people to respect the laws of the country and then there is no problem.”
It takes a special kind of gold-medal gall for the IOC president to expect protesters to adhere to the laws of the country while his organization itself trampled the very same laws with respect to the female ski jumpers.
I am not surprised by this kind of nonsense from the IOC president, but I have a higher standard for the CBC. We simply cannot let this kind of IOC hypocrisy go unchallenged and we cannot let the CBC play down police use of agents provocateurs.
Our society cannot handle these kind of compromises. The Olympics is bad enough, but we need civil vigilance if we expect to retain the kind of democratic values Jacques Rogge so disingenuously speaks of.
Activism Class War Consumerism Environment International Relations Justice Morality Natural Resources Neoliberal Economics Postmodernism
by Stephen Elliott-Buckley
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Seeing Social Movement Theory in Christmas Movies
I’m hyper-attuned to building a social movement. In fact, I’m seeing it all over the place, from tight clusters of birds whipping around in their collective unconscious to Christmas movies.
Watching Polar Express tonight reminded me of my favourite part of the film near the end. Everyone’s waiting for Santa to come out and play. All the elves are standing around mumbling. Then there’s this converging anarchy of voices leading to an “ooooooOOOOOOhhhhhHHHHH yyyyyyYYYYYooooooOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU…” that coalesces into “Oh, you better watch out,” etc. of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” Many disparate voices joining together.
So I’m thinking about the abject failure of the Copenhagen summit for climate change a few weeks ago. Not surprising, really, when I think about it because the other day I was cutting some french toast in half [well 2/3 and 1/3] to see if my daughter would pick the bigger half. Game theory: the person who cuts is not the one who picks which half. I figured that was related to the realpolitik BS that killed Copenhagen.
So then I started reading up on the The One Degree War and how Evo Morales is convening a climate summit for social movements on Earth Day next year. The first begins a dialogue on solving a global crisis in an open-source, non-proprietary way; it feels quite cooperative. The second recognizes that a way past the 17th century political culture that killed Copenhagen is to convene a movement of movements.
I was thinking of that when I started Canada22.org on Earth Day in 2006, but I didn’t have the mobilization juice to scale it up to a provincial or federal level. But it’s nice to see now that organizations like TckTckTck.org have been able to hack together 15 million people to mobilize in advance of Copenhagen and we now have 11 months to mobilize before COP16 in Mexico next winter.
If we are ever going to get from zero-sum politics to positive-sum gains, we have to change the rules and deligitimize the old politics. And the people have to take control. And we have to see through the corporate greenwashing of Hopenhagen and realize their vibe contributed to the pablum document in Copenhagen and destroyed real movements for climate justice.
Social movements are a dire threat to political parties that still operate in the 17th century and maybe even the 20th century paradigm. Paradigm mechanics like TckTckTck.org and Evo Morales and George Monbiot are most able to pivot us into a new era. We have to get on board or our leaders will sell us down the tar sands river, starting with the Canadian prime minister.
Now I just have to figure out if Bert and Ernie [the cop and cab driver..which is which? and does it matter?] in It’s A Wonderful Life are really the inspiration for the Sesame Street characters and if there’s a nascent social movement brewing there. Then I’ll really have something.
Activism Bioregions Class War Consumerism Corporations Environment Equality Justice Morality Natural Resources Neoliberal Economics Voluntary Simplicity
by Stephen Elliott-Buckley
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Economic Growth is a Cancer: Meet Steady State Economics
For decades I’ve been hearing about and studying how humans are living beyond the planet’s capability of sustaining us…and that we’ve been doing so quite unequally.
And what have we done about that? Embraced neoliberal, deregulated free market capitalism: the economic expression of rape and pillage.
Reduce, reuse, recycle neglects the real first R: refuse.
Our notion of progress requires growth and improvement. We measure this in expansion of GDP and trade. But we are so divorced from the ramifications of our lifestyle that despite all the canaries dying in coal mines, we still might screw up Copenhagen beginning this weekend and leave the meeting with a world lacking unity on averting climate breakdown. And Canada may end up being the spoiler.
We are divorced from the reality of nature’s cycles. We think of growth as linear and upward and not cyclical and level. Nature goes in a circle of seasons. We don’t get more winter or spring each year, we just have equilibrium.
Even our calendars do not help us realize this, which is why this new way of envisioning a calendar is quite liberating: Chris Hardman’s Ecological Calendar.
And if people whack the equilibrium, the ecosystem responds. My children may be the victims of that response for decades more years than I will remain alive. If we cannot stomach that, we need to make sure Copenhagen works.
But how do we get off the economic growth addiction?
It requires a massive reframing. 20 years ago, there were no drink or paper recycling containers in schools and offices. Now they’re ubiquitous.
That took a reframed mindset.
Take also environmental footprints, a concept virtually unknown a decade ago. Now it is a useful and widely understood analytical tool for thinking about our individual contribution to a better or worse environment.
Getting off the economic growth fix can mean embracing steady state economics. This is an economic model that treats the economy as a means to human ends, not maximizing short-term shareholder wealth.
But what does anyone know about this model of zero-growth economics? Follow the link above and read the brief description of the values inherent in the model: sustainable scale, fair distribution, efficient allocation. Do they resonate with you? Do they seem more appealing for your moral goals for our relationship with the planet than getting a 9-18% return on your investments until you retire? Because that is the trade off.
More blatantly, the trade off is between something more like a 1-5% return on your investments or reframing our economy so the majority world living in poverty has a better chance at surviving and living in dignity.
If we cannot conceive of economic growth as being a cancer, it may not be because it’s wrong. It may be because we’ve been drinking this Kool-Aid fed to us in a steady marketing diet since birth. How could we be expected to see things differently. We need to use our imagination to contend with liberating ideas that are challenging to our unquestioned mindset.
Try steady state. 4 out of 5 dentists surveyed find it a healing tonic for ecological turmoil caused by neoliberal economics.
Activism British Columbia Democracy Justice NDP
by Stephen Elliott-Buckley
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BC NDP Convention Minus 7 Days: My Journey Towards the Executive
Since 8:35pm on Tuesday, May 12, 2009, I’ve been thinking hard about the state of the BC NDP.
By that time of evening on election day, it was clear that there were profound problems with the party. So I spent the following months talking to dozens of people about what is broken and how to fix it.
But these last 6 months have been just the most recent part of my adult life inspired by the NDP embracing progressive ideals of community-building and social justice.
It began in Coquitlam 20 years ago when Ian Waddell was my MP. These were years of profound social and political awakening for me as I attended NDP community meetings and saw what the pursuit of social justice meant.
So I embraced community.
I volunteered with the Red Cross running leadership, community involvement, international develop seminars. I became the president of the New Westminster branch of the Red Cross, and while I was studying organizational design at SFU, I was fortunate enough sit on the Strategic Planning committee of the BC-Yukon Division of the Red Cross.
Those volunteer experiences taught me the value of community development, education, the potential of youth, civic responsibility and commitment to healthy organizational change.
Those experiences dovetailed together to inspire me to become a high school English teacher in Coquitlam. I found helping youth communicate better meant empowering them to ask for what they want in society. Or even demand it.
Along the way I found being a BCTF activist to be a complementary activity to my teaching philosophy, supporting the union’s efforts to join the BC Federation of Labour and take a stand against Gordon Campbell.
But the combination of a few events led to a profound transformation in my vocation.
I came across Desmond Tutu’s writing about the word “ubuntu”: a person is a person through other people. It focussed my teaching even more towards social and political justice.
The MAI and WTO threats re-kindled my economics background with a rage against global neoliberalism.
Then Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark tried to destroy what it meant to be a teacher in BC.
I had enough.
So I left teaching, picked up a couple political science degrees and began a career as a CUPE researcher, now assigned to the healthcare sector at our HEU affiliate.
Along the way, the NDP has been at times both an inspiration and a frustration, falling short of my ideals at times and at other times demonstrating bold social and political leadership.
But it was when my inglorious MP David Emerson crossed the floor that I began to fully engage in party politics. I joined the riding executive in Vancouver-Kensington. I supported Don Davies’ campaign for political integrity in Vancouver-Kingsway and I wrote and talked and advocated for an end to Campbell’s new era of misery.
Following the election, Mable Elmore inspired a strategic planning session in our riding during which we started forming an idea that the NDP should build a social movement within itself that would help the party transform itself into something that can be a force for progressive change in the 21st century.
This idea led to Think Forward BC NDP and a dialogue that has spread all across British Columbia during these past months, uncovering challenges and stimulating debate about where our party needs to go.
Over the next few days I’ll be writing about all this: what’s wrong with the party, why we lost the election, how we can fix the party, what it means to be an electoral wing of a progressive social movement, what internal democracy could look like, how we can define ourselves as a party, and why we should be the natural governing party in BC.
Through these daily updates, I will explain why now, after studying our lost election and helping build Think Forward BC NDP, running for Vice-President of the party is a natural place for me to be. I want to contribute to helping our party through a massive, and necessary, transformation. And I want to see us emerge as a vibrant force for powerful social, economic, political and economic justice.
Class War Environment Justice Neoliberal Economics
by Stephen Elliott-Buckley
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Nigel Lawson: Public Enemy #1
First a neoliberal champion, now Lawson actually welcomes climate breakdown!
It will be a frosty night in Ottawa in October when the grumpy Lord Nigel Lawson spends an evening with the Fraser Institute celebrating neoliberalism and daring climate breakdown to challenge our adaptability. For $195 you can throw heaping stares of disdain at the fellow who was such a major champion of Thatcher’s decimation of social programs in the name of corporate greed.
Not satisfied to remove economic supports for the vulnerable in Britain, Lawson has written a new book that, as the Fraser Institute plugs it below, says the UN’s IPCC is a political correct gang who are not bright enough to realize that human adaptability is eager for a challenge like climate breakdown because, of course, all 6.5 billion humans are in a politically and economically vibrant position to be able to see our planet alter into something far more threatening and merely roll with the punches!
I suppose the right wing has moved past denying climate breakdown and now they’re just arguing that we can simply adapt to it. Don’t worry, be happy.
Fraser Institute 5th Annual Canada Strong and Free
Ottawa Dinner
featuring Lord Lawson
Monday, October 5, 2009 · Chateau Laurier Hotel · Ottawa
Join Mike Harris, Fraser Institute senior fellow, as he hosts the 5th Annual Canada Strong and Free Gala Dinner with Lord Nigel Lawson, former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer and Secretary of State for Energy.
Lord Lawson helped British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher re-engineer the UK economy through deregulation, privatization, and tax reductions that resulted in widespread job creation and business investment. Lawson has now turned his attention to global warming with a new book, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming, in which he argues that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has become a politically correct pressure group that fails to consider human potential to adapt to any global warming that may occur.
Join us as Lord Lawson explains why additional government control of the economy threatens to do far more harm than good and how proposed climate change policies will exacerbate the damage.
via http://www.gifttool.com/registrar/ShowEventDetails?ID=1804&EID=4620.
Activism Bioregions Consumerism Democracy Environment Justice Natural Resources Neoliberal Economics Society Voluntary Simplicity
by Stephen Elliott-Buckley
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We’re Failing Our Grandchildren on Stopping Climate Breakdown
Our grandchildren will hate us for our informed inaction on climate change. I refuse to bear this.
I’m watching a National Geographic documentary on climate breakdown right now on the Knowledge Network. Saharan dust storms are madly increasing the rates of asthma and decreasing the health of sea fans on the reefs…in the Caribbean!
The increase in effects of GHGs in the last 30 years has increased the Saharan dust flying to kids’ lungs in the Caribbean. We KNOW this. Pleading ignorance is an offense to my children’s children.
US satellites are documenting more and more decline in ice. Are we acting yet? Only in a greenwashing way. Click on the photos to read about what is happening while we embrace mostly inaction.
New polling indicates real inconsistencies. Strong majorities of citizens in some countries are demanding more action, while similar sizes in other countries are dancing with complacency. Two of the latter countries are China and the USA. Together, those countries can eradicate efforts by the rest of the world.
We have to massively reduce our energy consumption in how we live, work and consume. We must force our leaders to lead in this.
I know I’m going to answer to my grandchildren. I already blame my parents’ generation for somewhat ignorantly contributing to many of our current problems, not the least of which are massive materialism and consumerism. How much more will we be judged by our descendants for ruining their world, knowing that we know better. The answer? To a degree I refuse to accept passively.
Alarmism and reactionary pleas seem to be increasing, policies seem to be improving somewhat, but we’re squandering our handful of years left to make the massive changes necessary to avoid breakdown. Now, shake your head and read this. And let’s get busy.
Think about how you will look your grandchildren in the eye. I’m not looking forward to that conversation.
British Columbia Class War Consumerism Justice NDP Neoliberal Economics
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“Axe the Tax”: NOW We Need that Campaign!
While the Axe the Tax campaign ruined the BC NDP’s green credibility last year and helped lose the election, it is time for an Axe the Tax campaign now with the regressive HST.
The government is consistently lying that it will save money by harmonizing the logistics of tax collection. They simply refuse to respond to complaints against the reality that they are also removing so many goods and services that are exempt from the PST right now. This is nothing new from this neoLiberal gang.
While the NDP is going through several internal reform movements since it squandered its chance to remove this anti-social government, one thing is sure: the party needs to do a better job of education, including, listening to and motivating members to be activists.
Judging from the mobilization so far against the regressive HST, this may be a good focal point for building a social movement within the party to improve BC and destroy this neoLiberal government.
Nearly nine out of 10 British Columbians oppose the new harmonized sales tax and believe it will hit them where it hurts — their pocketbooks.
via British Columbians overwhelmingly reject harmonized tax.
British Columbia Class War Education Equality Health Justice Neoliberal Economics Poverty
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Shirley Bond’s Marie Antoinette Complex
shirleybond The heat wave continues-imagine being loaded on an Air Canada flight and then sitting on the tarmac in the heat for an hour – yup it was me!
Shirley Bond should keep using Twitter so we can see a better sense of her lack of empathy and perspective. Former Minister of Education and Deputy Premier, now Transportation Minister Bond, you’d think, would get some training in how not to offend the poorest 95% of British Columbians with her tweets…and how to update her Twitter profile to recognize her demotion in the cabinet shuffle.
Since her government refuses to choose to fund health care properly, BC’s health authorities are $360m in the hole. I personally know people who will suffer physical and mental trauma because of this. Many of us do.
Choosing to not fund education will mean hundreds of teacher layoffs and thousands of classes over the legal class size limit: a law the neoLiberals themselves enacted.
I’ve sat in hot planes on tarmacs. But I’m not responsible for massively increasing the misery of hundreds of thousands of British Columbians. So she gets no sympathy from me.
And while she doesn’t say “let us all eat cake,” the reverse is “weep for my suffering despite all of yours that I have caused.”
Give me a break.
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Why the Windsor CUPE Strike Will Inspire You
Read on and enrich your spirit for progressive social change, understand the need to build solidarity on the ground, and learn about the threat of cyber-scabbing!
The strike is an instance rare in the current climate of workers’ struggling for a political principle rather than immediate wage demands. As such, it has much to teach but also reveals complex challenges that both the labour movement and the Canadian left will have to meet in the near future.
The main issue at stake for both locals is the City’s demand that post-retirement medical benefits be eliminated for all future hires.
…
The future of the union movement as the first line of working class defence against ruling class attempts to make working people pay for the recurrent crises of capitalism depends upon its discovering new ways to mobilize its membership against this new mutation of an old divide and conquer strategy. It also depends on building solidarity, the next critical issue of general significance raised by the strike.
via Cyber-scabbing? Lessons for labour from the Windsor CUPE strike | rabble.ca.
Activism British Columbia Corporations Feminism First Nations Gender Issues Health Identity Justice Morality Psychology
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The Sick Government BCers Just Re-Elected
$2m is less than 50 cents/resident of BC.
Matt Good’s profound review of contradictions in, around, during and after Woodlands will pummel your soul, but in a good way, unless you’re a heartless misanthropist. And this first bit is just emblematic of how this government views its social responsibilities:
In 2005, Stan Hagen, BC’s Children and Family Development Minister, claimed that the Provincial government did not subscribe to the view that systematic abuse took place at Woodlands despite the fact that in 2002 the Provincial government issued an official apology to some 1,500 survivors of Woodlands, Essondale, Valleyview, and Tranquille. Unfortunately, the $2 million dollars promised to provide counseling for them has never materialized.
Decades ago, as families picnicked across the highway in Queen’s Park, children were being tortured within view of it. The headstones of those unclaimed victims of Woodlands were, over the years, thrown in the nearby ravine, used to build a staff barbecue patio and stairs, and 1,800 of them were ripped out of the ground in late 70’s so that a park could be built. All that is left now is a small memorial that some believe to be enough to mark their passing, a small park in which local residents allow their dogs to defecate and urinate, were graffiti defames shattered headstones.
Activism British Columbia Democracy Equality Identity Justice Morality Politics
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No More Strategic Voting: Thanks STV!
This election will see the last strategic vote you will ever need to cast in a provincial election in BC.
STV is polling quite high and I expect it to pass. This means that you no longer have to plug your nose voting for someone to keep someone else from running the place. And it also means you don’t have to waste your vote in a protest by voting for a candidate who won’t win, all to avoid abstaining.
STV means the proportion of votes going to parties will come very close to being translated into seats in the legislature by making sure that someone you rank will use your vote to win a seat.
So if you can’t handle Gordon Campbell anymore, and would prefer not to vote for the NDP for whatever reason, but you feel you need to do it now, here’s how you can put a smile on your face.
When you cast your ballot, vote for STV as well to make sure that the next election will mean that your ranking of candidates won’t be wasted as one of them will almost certainly use your vote to become elected.
The most frustrating thing for me leading up to any election is listening to smart, passionate, concerned friends voting for parties they hate to keep from wasting their vote. Or else they don’t vote and I can understand why. If the system is this broken, it needs to be fixed.
I think for a place with only two political parties our current system is awesome since the winner will have to get more than 50% of the votes. 19th century Canada was such a place, but even then the parties didn’t need to represent women or other politically undesirables.
But in a place like Vancouver, BC and Canada, there are no two parties that effectively reflect everyone’s identities and passions. This is why we get vote splitting, unearned majority governments, wasted votes, apathy, anger and cynicism.
It’s astonishing that we can fix all these things just by changing the system. STV here we come!
Activism British Columbia Class War Executive Overdrive Justice Olympic Games Soft Fascism Transit Vancouver
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TransLink Police Harassment: The Olympics are Coming So Get Used to It
Watch this and learn!
Know your rights, carry video phones/cams, question authorities. Call them on abusive behaviour.
Watch the spread of CCTV in the city.
Watch how things tighten up as the Olympics approach.
Support the BC Civil Liberties Association.
Remember, public servants serve the public.